


Some things remain.

by rosehips



Category: Law & Order: SVU
Genre: Episode tag: S19e03 Contrapasso, Established Barson, F/M, Fluff, I'm worried about Barba's mental health and so is Liv, Oneshot, but also:
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-21
Updated: 2017-10-21
Packaged: 2019-01-20 23:14:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,096
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12443985
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rosehips/pseuds/rosehips
Summary: It’s been months since he’s been happy for any sustained period of time. Months since he’s shown that confident courtroom swagger. Yesterday’s gory speech was a warped mirror image of that; yesterday, when his voice cracked on the word fair, he’d sounded almost unhinged. And the day before, his near-hopelessness at the bar when he asked without words for her to convince him to fight. His broad shoulders so hunched down she’d wondered briefly if he was in pain.





	Some things remain.

**Author's Note:**

> Un-beta'd, so let me know if you see any errors!

She finds him in his office. Never mind that it’s past 5 on a Friday, never mind that he won the trial -- there he is, pouring himself some scotch just as she comes in. Jacket off, tie loosened, sleeves rolled up. Someone might think he looks relaxed if they didn’t look too closely.

She leans against the doorframe. “Hey.”

Rafael glances up only for a moment, not surprised to see her. “Hey, Liv. Want a drink?”

“No, and I don’t think you do either.”

“Oh, I think I do,” he counters mildly, and takes a sip.

“Hmm.” She strolls over to his desk. “That was… quite the closing argument,” she comments, watching his face.

He sets down his drink, runs his finger idly along the rim. “Is that a compliment?” His half-smile falls short of its usual charm.

She leans over and slides the glass away, then rests her hand on the table, just next to his. He brushes his pinky across her thumb. It’s the most they allow themselves at work, no matter how empty the building might seem. They didn’t used to be so cautious, and Amanda almost caught them once -- she knocked on Liv’s office door and opened it without waiting for a response, giving them barely enough time to jump apart. Liv is pretty sure, actually, that Amanda knew exactly what they were doing, but she did them the kindness of not saying so. Continues to not say anything. Liv knows they’ll have to disclose soon, but she’s nervous. They both are. It could well mean the end of working cases together, and she hates the very idea of that… but looking at his face now, she wonders.

“It’s a concern, actually,” she answers.

His face pinches slightly and he pulls his hand away. “I won, didn’t I?”

She sighs and shakes her head. “Kids’ brains splattering against a wall? Blood running in the streets? I haven’t heard you talk like that before.”

“It was just for the jury. And it worked.” He bites the words out.

Liv walks around to his side instead and leans against the desk, the position he so often takes in her office. “You sounded upset, Rafael.”

He gives a jerky shrug.

“I didn’t expect this one would hit hard for you,” she presses. “Was it the case? Or what Rivers said, about justice and -- ”

“No,” he says impatiently, swinging his legs down from the desk. He reaches for his drink, then changes his mind and leaves it. “No, it’s -- I don’t know. Maybe it was what you said at the bar.”

“What _I_ said?” she repeats in surprise.

“About why we do this.” He scrubs his hand down his face and sighs. “I don’t know,” he repeats, and then looks up at her and his eyes are so big and tired she can’t help but brush her hand against his cheek, quick and soft. His eyes flutter shut for a moment, then open again. “Do you think it’s working?” he asks plainly.

“What do you mean?” she asks, though she thinks she already knows.

“Doing the same thing over and over and over again. One case at a time. When we win, is it just? I know -- ” he raises his hand to ward off her indignant response -- “I know it’s justice for the victim, but Liv, is it doing anything for justice beyond that? Really. Because it just keeps happening, and nothing we do is stopping it.”

She looks at him closely, the bags under his eyes, the pale cast to his face. She remembers what he said in February: _I love this job, oh I really do. But sometimes…_

“Higher conviction rates mean people take the consequences rape more seriously,” she says to him. “Including rapists. We’re changing the culture one case at a time. It’s slow, but it’s happening. And in the meantime it means the world to the victims we’re helping.” It’s a speech she’s given before, just not to him. She doesn’t like that she has to give it to him.

“I suppose,” Rafael concedes, but his voice is flat and tired.

She takes his hand. “Someone has to do it,” she tells him. “And you’re the best.”

He lets out a weak laugh. “Tell that to the DA.”

“The DA,” she says, “should pay attention to your conviction rate, and give you a raise.”

“Wouldn’t that be nice.”

She sighs, squeezes his hand. “Why don’t you take the weekend off? Really off, I mean” she suggests softly. “Come over. Turn off your phone and leave your work here. We can order Chinese, and you can sleep in.”

He hums, considering, but she knows he’s halfway convinced already, so -- with a quick glance back to make sure there’s no one in the front office -- she leans down and kisses him. He raises his hand and slowly threads his fingers through her hair; her hands cup his face as she leans closer.

“Come over,” she says again, and her words are a whisper against his lips.

“Okay.”

He pours the rest of his scotch down the sink before they go.

* * *

It may have been the kiss and the promise of more that won Rafael over, but by the time dinner is done and Noah’s in bed they’re both too tired for the “more” part. He showers first, and then Liv heads in while he changes into pajamas, stretches out on the bed, and opens up the copy of _The Left Hand of Darkness_ that he’d left here last time.

By the time she gets out of the bathroom, the book is open face-down on his chest and he’s fast asleep. Liv smiles and slides the reading glasses from his nose, and carefully sets them and the book on the bedside table. She turns off the light, and crawls under the covers beside him.

“Liv,” he mumbles, shifting in his sleep to be closer to her. She wraps her arm around his waist and gives the back of his neck a gentle kiss. It only takes her a few minutes to fall asleep.

* * *

Liv is up before him the next morning, and gets dressed quietly so as to let him sleep in further. She scribbles a note -- _Taking Noah to the park then dropping him off for his playdate. Frozen waffles in the fridge if you want._ \-- and leaves it on top of his phone. He actually had turned it off last night, and she’d been shocked he didn’t put up a fight about it until she thought of his various travels and ski trips and how unreachable he’d always been during them. Rafael takes vacation seriously, she supposes, even when the “vacation” is spent at his girlfriend’s apartment. She’s glad, and she closes the bedroom door quietly.

It’s almost 11am by the time Liv gets back, and she’s surprised when Rafael isn’t in the kitchen or the living room. She’d expected him to stay the day -- hoped for the whole weekend, in fact -- and can’t believe he left without texting or saying goodbye. She’s starting to go from disappointed and hurt to angry when she goes into the bedroom and finds him still asleep.

He’s laying on his back with one arm limp over his stomach and the other cast out across her side of the bed. Mouth open, breathing slow and steady, he looks so peaceful she has to swallow a lump in her throat. _He never looks this way,_ Liv thinks, and walks quietly over to see him better. The sheets are tangled at his waist, and his grey Harvard t-shirt that he wears as a pajama top is soft where she brushes her fingers against it -- lightly, not wanting to wake him, but for some reason needing to touch him, check in on him. His hair is a mess (he’d fallen asleep before it dried after his shower) and it curls slightly where it falls down his forehead, free from its usual gelled coif. His temples are greying and there are worry lines around his mouth and his brow, but in sleep his face is so relaxed he looks young. So much so that her heart fills with an almost unbearable tenderness for him -- Rafael, her best friend, her best love, brave and so very tired.

 _I miss him,_ she realizes, and her stomach sinks. She sits heavily on the bed beside him, thinking back.

It’s been months since he’s been happy for any sustained period of time. Months since he’s shown that confident courtroom swagger. Yesterday’s gory speech was a warped mirror image of that; yesterday, when his voice cracked on the word _fair,_ he’d sounded almost unhinged. And the day before, his near-hopelessness at the bar when he asked without words for her to convince him to fight. His broad shoulders so hunched down she’d wondered briefly if he was in pain.

Months. Maybe longer. Maybe since last spring, when the death threats got bad enough that they faced him on the courthouse steps. Certainly he wasn’t himself by the time Willard got to him, by the time he said _But sometimes…_ “I know,” she had told him then, and she thought she did, but now she’s not sure, because she can’t remember feeling as drained as he’s seemed lately. Angry, yes. Hopeless, even, certainly frustrated, certainly grief-stricken.

But not this.

She wants to pull him from it. She wants to let him sleep until he wakes up with that fire in his belly again, but she’s scared he needs more than that. A break, a change. She doesn’t want him to go, but god she wants him to be happy, and he’s not happy here.

Rafael stirs slightly, then opens his eyes. He looks up at her with heavy lids, and a small smile. “Good morning.”

“It’s almost afternoon, Rafa,” she informs him, running her hand through his hair like she’d wanted to since she came into the room.

“Is it really? I guess I was more tired than I realized.” He sits up with a groan. “Did you have a good morning, then?”

“Yes. Noah and I went to the park. It’s nice out today.”

He frowns. “I’m sorry I missed that.”

She knows he means it, too. He’d been a little scared of Noah when Noah was a baby -- didn’t know how to hold him, didn’t know how to interact with him -- but now that he’s grown up a bit, Rafael enjoys spending time with him. (“You can’t reason with a baby,” he’d explained when Liv asked about the change, “but he responds to _logic_ now.”)

“You can join us next time,” she says. She moves to press a kiss to his stubbled cheek, but he turns his head and catches it with his mouth. “Ugh,” she says, pulling a face. “Morning breath.”

He laughs out loud. “I’ll brush my teeth, then,” he tells her as he gets out of bed, “because I intend to spend the afternoon kissing you.”

She smiles after him, and realizes she was wrong. He’s happy _here,_ at home and with her. Less so _there,_ at work, at his desk covered in file after file of brutalized victims, at the precinct where day in and day out they face the worst kinds of violence humans can inflict on one another and do their best to fight it.

But he’s happy here. And he’s happy when all of them are together for some other reason, a good reason -- gathered at a cop bar for drinks after a case won, or at someone’s apartment for a holiday gathering, or even in the squad room when there’s a lull in the day and they don’t have to talk about the worst things; they can talk about what’s good in the world. He’ll act put-upon, but she knows he likes hearing about Amanda’s baby (and her dog) and Fin’s grandson and Carisi’s endless parade of relatives. He likes hearing about families, she realizes, and he likes being part of one. And he is: part of the little family the squad has built itself into. And part of hers.

He comes out of the bathroom fresh-faced and relaxed, and she thinks she sees some swagger in his step after all when he approaches her, smirking even before he leans in for a kiss.

 _Yes,_ she thinks as they lay down together, _some things remain good._ Even if he goes -- leaves the DA’s office, leaves SVU -- he’ll never leave _her._

She’s been left enough times to know when someone is going to stay. And he will.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm starting to get the sinking feeling that they're going to write Barba off the show this season, and in addition to kicking and screaming at the very idea I also decided to write this piece of fluff in which two things I very much want to be true are true: he'll never completely leave, and also Barson is real. 
> 
> Wrote this before watching the episode after Contrapasso. I'll go watch it now and hopefully it will completely invalidate my fears! In the meantime, yay for fic at least.


End file.
